Re: Nineteen-year-old language sketch unearthed!

> Amanda Babcock wrote:
>
>> I exchanged languages with two of my friends, but
>> we never really learned each other's to speak it!
>
> We weren't really _speaking_ Thenian, so much as reciting from memory, much
> as one might do parts of the Latin Mass.
>
>> This reminds me, I wanted to mention one of my sketches that I really did
>> do at 14 or 15 years old. It was called "Ahlotarnom Intelokeyt", which
>> meant "The Most Difficult Language". Why was it so difficult, you ask?
>> Why, because it had really quite a number - *several*, even - of
>> declensions
>> and conjugations! And cases! As many as 6 or 7!
>
> About average, by today's conlang standards :-)))
>
> My very first effort, at about that same age, consisted of exactly 1 verb--
> bhar/anoi 'to bear', with about 10 pages of conjugated forms-- indicative,
> subjunctive, imperative, desiderative, participles and probably more. I
> don't recall any nouns :-(( That lang. too was based on ill-digested
> encylopaedia articles (vintage 1900) on Sanskrit and "Indo-Germanic"
> "philology", and wherever the cross refs. led. The singular endings
> were -mi, -si, -ti but after that it went off into a-priori-land for the
> dual and plual :-))))

At the age of 14 or 15, I would have been just starting with Olaetian. I
had no idea about cases of nouns, but I was familiar with French and
Spanish, so I did have verb conjugation.